Surfing is a very popular water sport around the world. However, surfing is a difficult and complex skill to acquire because the surfing situations are very dynamic. Surfable waves, or surf waves are an outcome of a complex phenomenon between waves and underwater currents in the oceans, shallowing land towards the shore and the wind conditions. Since the constituent factors vary and change dynamically, the surfing conditions change dynamically as well, making it even more difficult for learners to reproduce situations in which they can repetitively practice a given skill set.
In addition to general difficulties in acquiring the skill of surfing, even more difficult is to acquire advanced surfing skills, such as ‘pumping’ on a face of a surf wave, ‘stalling’, ‘cutbacks’, ‘off-the lips’, ‘floaters’, ‘aerials’ or ‘barrel’ riding, and learners can sometimes spend months or years in learning or perfecting these skills.
With the advent of artificially generated surf waves, for example those using wave generation mechanisms in a pool, some of the dynamic conditions associated with surf waves are reduced, which may aid learners in training to surf. However, despite such artificially generated surf waves, advanced surfing skills remain difficult to learn, and even more difficult to perfect.
Therefore, there exists a need in the art for a method and apparatus for providing training to a surfer while surfing.